Tesco Plans 48 Inland Empire Sites

ELLIOT ZWIEBACH

EL SEGUNDO, Calif. — Tesco said last week it plans to open 48 Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market locations in Southern California's Inland Empire over the next two years — 30 in Riverside County and 18 in San Bernardino County.

Two stores, one in each county, are scheduled to open this year, with 17 more scheduled to open next year and 29 set to open in 2009. The company said in June it expects to begin opening stores in early November in Southern California, Arizona and Las Vegas, with 30 stores in operation by Christmas and 20 more before the end of the company's fiscal year in late February; it also said at the time it had 100 more locations in its development pipeline.

A company spokesman told SN the 1.4-million-square-foot distribution center Tesco is building in Riverside is on schedule to open in time to begin supplying the stores in early November. The company also said last week it will operate a 90,000-square-foot prepared foods kitchen adjacent to the warehouse to supply freshly made products to its stores. It also said it plans to make daily deliveries to the stores and to source as much as possible from local suppliers, including 60% of produce from California growers and all of its chicken from within the state.